Woofer

This last week, I suffered a rib fracture with a pneumothorax, lumbar spinal cord injury with paralysis, dislocated shoulder, hyponatremia and heat exhaustion, an intracranial bleed, and an ectopic pregnancy. Sorry, I mean I simulated suffering from those things. They were fake (phew about the pregnancy, right?). Makeup bruises, imagined pain, lots of drama, but I did manage some real tears for the paralysis scenario. Although when you're lying on your back on a rock in the rain, not allowed to move your legs, the tears aren't that hard.

I spent the last five days in a special wilderness first responder (WFR) course for medical professionals, during which we all got to play rescuers and patients to the point that I was dreaming about it by the last night. My last CME course definitely did not find me building traction splints from hiking poles. Or traipsing through waist-high grass in White Ranch Park looking for "victims" of a lightning strike, and then waiting in the dark for a litter team to arrive so we could evacuate her safely. Or experiencing first-hand the ear-popping pressure change inside a Gamow bag, which can treat high-altitude pulmonary edema. (My last CME course did get me to pass boards, so there's that...)

We were 29 plus our fabulous instructors (oh, one of them is the NOLS director of education, you say? he wrote the textbook, you say? and we get access to his brain all week? yes, please). EMTs, paramedics, RNs, and MDs from all walks of life, from psychiatry to FBI (yup, FBI!). And most of these people practice pre-hospital medicine every day. You know, the stuff before they come to the ER all pre-packaged and stable? The part without the lab and the radiology suite and the pharmacist? The hard part? Yeah, they do that. I felt super under-qualified.

But that's why we learn. And boy howdy, did I learn. Practical hands-on things like knot-tying and ankle-taping and one-person log rolls, as well as teamwork skills, planning skills, ideas for a first-aid and survival kit, and plenty of wilderness medicine (did you know you don't do CPR in severe hypothermia because of the risk of V-fib? me neither. Now I do). So now maybe I don't have to feel quite so worthless without all my technology and fancy hospital things when something happens in the wilderness, and people are like "Oh, you're a doctor? Great!" Cause, yeah, my MD means nothing out there. But now I got some extra letters and stuff, so I guess I'll be okay.